


Thorn & Pen

by Calchexxis



Category: Darkest Dungeon (Video Game)
Genre: Campfires, F/F, Femslash, First Kiss, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Lesbian Character, No Lesbians Die
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:47:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28433394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calchexxis/pseuds/Calchexxis
Summary: The young Philomath Oleander and Nue the Thorn are newly paired as battle partners by the Heir of the Estate. Now at rest in the darkness of the Weald during a long excursion into the foreboding forest, Nue decides to ask a little about her partner, and finds their hearts growing closer than she expected.
Relationships: Thorn/Philomath
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	Thorn & Pen

“What precisely _is_ a philomath?”

Oleander Quinn regards her battle partner quizzically over her book at the sudden question. Nue is a curious woman; tall, pale, and lean, with hawkish features. Her hair, a fair shade of firelight, is tied back in a ponytail behind her head, and the tightly drawn strands highlight the hard edges of her face.

All but her eyes. Or lack thereof.

For what little time the pair had known one another, the duelist had always worn a blinder. The first and last time Oleander had asked about it, Nue had told her that she’d lost her eyes years ago in a voice like cold metal.

Oleander hadn’t had the nerve to ask how.

“It means ‘one who loves to learn’, in essence.”

Brushing a strand of thick, dark hair from her face as she shuts the book, Oleander sits up to lean against the log she’d been resting on as the campfire dances and chases away the dark as Nue settles in beside her.

The Weald beyond the Hamlet is a dire, unpleasant place, even as woodlands go. Unnatural animals and twisted cultists rove the grim stretches of the wildlands, to say nothing of the brigands, and the floral horrors of the place. That they had left the Hamlet with the intention of spending multiple nights in this forsaken forest rooting out a particularly large presence of threats made Oleander’s stomach roil.

If it weren’t for Nue, she’d probably have gone mad.

“Interesting,” Nue says in that soft, breathy voice of hers. “May I ask you something else?”

Prior to this, Nue never showed any interest in her, and Oleander never questioned it as they had little in common as far as she knew. The duelist was somewhere in her mid-thirties, by best guess, while Oleander had only barely left her teens. Despite her youth, though, the knowledge she had so deeply delved into had left lines in her face.

“I suppose so,” Oleander replies finally.

“What do you look like?”

It takes Oleander a moment to remember that Nue would have no way of knowing what she looked like, even despite the constant reminder on the older woman’s face. If one didn’t pay too close of attention to how Nue walks with her cane-sheathed blade, they might be forgiven for never realising it at all.

“Uhm, dark skin, and darker hair,” Oleander says. “Dark eyes too… I’m a southron, so it comes with the territory.”

“Did you study at the Academy of New Gereve?”

“I did,” she replies. “Until my expulsion.”

“Was it worth it?” Nue asks.

That is a question Oleander has asked herself many, many times, and never with a satisfactory answer. She had learned such things. Seen such sights. She learned names no human tongue can properly pronounce and came to understand the subtle powers that bind human minds to this tenuous existence, and moreover she learned to sever those bindings.

“Is this about the Flesh?” Oleander asks.

Last week had been the week that the two of them had been designated as a battle pair. Where one went, so too did the other, no matter what. The Heir had declared the two of them as ideal combat partners after Oleander and Nue, along with Myrna, the taciturn Seraph, and Ahir, a master of Occult sciences, had descended into the depths of the Warrens to battle the Inchoate Flesh.

Tactical evaluations had suggested that the Flesh would be impossible to defeat without powerful poisons and traumatic, rending attacks to disrupt its healing. They lacked those options at the time, however and so the four of them had descended to fight the beast expecting, at best, for only one or two to emerge.

And in that desperate battle, when all seemed lost, Oleander had offered to call down one of the names into Nue’s own flesh, and be shackled to the protection of Oleander, but be made mighty in the process.

Nue had agreed, and though it was a near thing, between the two of them, the Flesh had been unmade.

Since that grim night, where Oleander goes, Nue is ever nearby. Likewise now, as it is more often than not, their other companions are common ones. Myrna, the mighty Seraph, is taking her usual silent vigil at camp’s edge, and the Master Occultist Ahir is sleeping on the other side of the fire with his back to them.

Those two do occasionally get paired elsewhere, but Nue and Oleander never are.

“In part,” Nue replies. “We’re a unit now, and I thought perhaps we should get to know one another.”

Oleander starts to nod, then chuckles as it occurs to her that Nue has no way of knowing she’s nodding.

“That seems fine to me,” she says. “Well, I’m a bit shorter than you, and my hair is so thick and curly that I can’t do much with it.”

“Is it long?” Nue asks.

“No.” Oleander runs her fingers through her own hair, wincing at the sweat and grit. “I keep it shoulder-length, or just about.”

“Who cuts it?”

“I do.”

Oleander pulls out a long, wicked knife, and although Nue can’t see it, she must have heard the sound of drawing steel because she puts out a hand for the blade.

Shrugging, Oleander hands off the knife to Nue who spins it deftly in her hand. She catches it on her palm, then on the back of her hand before flicking it around with her fingers. It’s a breathtaking display of manual dexterity, and Oleander watches with rapt attention as Nue finally flips the blade into the air and catches it by the hilt before turning it over and passing it back to her partner.

“That’s a lovely blade,” she says as Oleander takes it back. “Perfectly balanced.”

“Thank you,” Oleander says softly as she takes the blade back and sheathes it.

She’d never considered a blade to be lovely before, not really. The knife she carried with her had once occupied a spot behind a glass barrier in the museum adjoining the Academy and had, according to the placard, belonged to a Witch of the long dead Stremi coven and who had been burned alive at the stake by the Priests of the Light. 

None of that spoke of loveliness, to Oleander, but if Nue said so, then she was inclined to agree.

“The, uhm… the way you use your hands is beautiful.” Oleander’s words are awkward and stilted, and a blush works its way onto her cheeks unbidden. 

The effect on Nue could not be more different. Her face loses its expression, falling to something more somber as she looks away from Oleander and back to the fire.

“You should have seen me before,” Nue replies.

‘ _Before I lost my sight_ ’

Oleander hears the words that were left unspoken. Nue is, at this moment, one of the deadliest swordswomen that Oleander has ever known, and she’s blind. How much more magnificent must she have been back then?

Curling up, Oleander rests her head against her knees as guilt gnaws at her belly. Nue is pure and refined skill balanced with the perfect amount of power. Even blind she needs nothing more than the bell on the end of her cane and the blade it conceals in order to wreak havoc on an enemy.

She doesn’t need Oleander.

“Do you want a different partner? Nue asks.

Oleander looks up with her brow furrowed and eyes screwed up in confusion.

“What?” She stares at the blind woman in dismay. “Do I? Don’t you?”

Nue turns her blind regard onto Oleander with a frown.

“Why would I?” She asks. “With you, I’m finally useful again, Miss Quinn.”

“Call me Ol’,” Oleander says suddenly. “And… why would you think you’re not useful?”

Nue looks pensive for a moment before turning away from Oleander, angling her face to the firelight where it casts her blind features in stark relief and makes the sharp lines of her face seem almost preternatural. 

“This place demands quick and decisive action,” Nue says slowly. “No matter how fast I am, I must listen and wait for my opponent to move to know where they are, and even then I may not react in time to prevent grievous injury. I’m slowed by my weakness,” she gestures to her blinder, “but with you at my back, I fear nothing… although my skin crawls with that power of yours, it armours me and makes me feel almost as I once was.”

She is beautiful. That is Oleander’s overriding thought as she stares at Nue. The duelist’s face is cast in profile by the light of the campfire. Every inch of her is noble, every inch of her is beautiful.

“You ought to hate me,” Oleander says quietly. “The things I do… the things I know… it crawls in my head like beetles, and seeps into everything I touch like ink over clean white wool.”

Nue shrugs and smiles wanly.

“I am hardly white wool.”

She will never admit this aloud, but a part of Oleander is deeply glad for Nue’s blindness. It means she will never see the haggard lines of Ol’s face, or the way her hair mats against her head for lack of proper washing. It means that Nue will never see the way that Oleander spends so many of her waking hours staring at her battle partner and wishing she had a lick of courage to speak of.

“Aren’t you afraid of me?” Oleander asks after a moment of silence.

Nue doesn’t reply immediately, instead humming thoughtfully as she taps her finger on the bell at the top of her cane. It’s a habit that Oleander noticed some weeks ago. An idle tic that her partner indulges in whenever she’s deep in thought or idle and nervous. 

“No,” Nue says finally, “I wouldn’t say I’m afraid.”

“What _would_ you say?”

“Fascinated,” Nue replies.

Ol’s cheeks darken at the word, and another rush of gratitude to Nue’s blindness floods the young woman. Of all the words for Nue to use to describe her feelings towards Oleander, ‘fascinated’ had not been among those that she had expected to hear. Of course, fascination isn’t necessarily positive. Oleander herself is proof what dark places fascination can lead a body to.

Nue turns again, angling herself towards Oleander, and only in that moment does Ol’ realise why she’s doing it. Nue has no need to look at a person to speak to them. She can’t see them and can’t even tell if that person is looking back at _her_. For all she knows she’s being ignored. Moreover, actually locating the person she’s speaking to accurately enough to face them may not be terribly difficult for a woman who can strike a fly from the wall with her blade before it can buzz away, but it’s still more effort than a sighted person would have to make.

No, the only reason she would be doing it, would be for Oleander’s sake. To show her partner that she’s listening.

For a girl who lived much of her life alone and ignored, the sentiment is a powerful one.

“You have power, Ol’,” Nue says. “Power that has cost you terribly, and yet you descend into the dark with a bravery that I… I envy.”

“Bravery?!” Oleander lets out a weak, rasping laugh. “I’m _terrified!_ ”

“I did not say you weren’t, but you’re still here, aren’t you?” Nue gestures around to the darkness of the Weald, and Ol’ follows the line of her arm to look out over the foreboding forest around them.

“What’s your point?” Ol’ asks.

Nue settles back against the log and grips her cane-sword as she lets out a quiet sigh and shakes her head.

“My point,” Nue replies, “is that you do not falter in battle despite your fear. Whereas I came here as much to prove to myself that I can still fight as I did to find a place that would put me out of my misery.”

Her words struck Oleander to her core, put a stone in her throat and a cold pit in her stomach. In that brief moment, Nue had sounded so very weary. Of all the many terrible things that Oleander knows—and the many, many more terrible things she does not—the knowledge that Nue will die in darkness is, at least in this moment, more overwhelming than any of them.

Silently, Oleander dares to find a splinter of courage as she scoots closer to Nue, then reaches out and lays a hand over her partner’s. Nue’s dueling gloves are soft lambskin, and feel pleasant under Oleander’s fingers, and more pleasant is the feeling of Nue tightening her grip around Ol’s hand and twining their fingers together.

“When battle comes,” Nue says softly, “I am not afraid anymore, because I can hear your heartbeat behind me, and it is always so, so calm.”

“It’s only calm because I know you’re in front of me,” Oleander says. “Because I know that you’ll protect me.”

Slowly, a small smile finds its way onto Nue’s face. It’s a pleasant sight, to Ol’s eyes, heavy with exhaustion as they are. Nue is not someone who expresses herself loudly or blatantly, and so every twitch of her face that betrays some truth or emotion is precious to Oleander. 

Her smile, most of all.

“Ol’, may I make an odd request?” Nue asks.

“Certainly.”

Nue lets go of Oleander’s hand and carefully, finger by finger, pulls her gloves off, folds them, and sets them beside herself before raising both hands, fingers out, to frame Oleander’s face.

“May… May I touch your face?”

Oleander’s heart thunders in her chest. That is an odd request, and it takes Oleander several breaths to realise the reason that Nue is asking. She had wanted to know, before, what her partner looked like, and a verbal description could only go so far. This way, Nue could find out for herself, inasmuch as she was able to, precisely what Oleander looks like.

And that frightened the young woman.

She wanted, however selfishly, for Nue to maybe believe she was beautiful, or at least comely in some manner. If she let her partner touch her face then Nue would certainly feel the lines and furrows worn into her features by long, sleepless nights and her constant experiments with chemical amphetamines done to keep the darkest of her dreams at bay.

And yet, Oleander found she could not tell Nue ‘no’.

“O...Okay,” she says shakily, flicking her gaze around to assure herself they were still alone—that Myrna is still at the edge of camp on watch, and Ahir still slumbering on the far side of the fire. “I uhm… apologise in advance, I suppose, as I’m not much to look at, and much less to touch, I suspect.”

Nue frowns, but doesn’t argue, instead, she leans in a little closer and lays her hands on either side of Oleander’s face.

Her hands are soft and pleasant, and Oleander can’t help but close her eyes and let out a small, wet half-sigh-half-sob at the balm of Nue’s touch. How long has it been since someone else has touched her like this? Nue’s hands are blessedly cool against Oleander’s fevered flesh, and her touch is infinitely gentle.

Nue traces the lines of Ol’s cheekbone down to her delicate jaw, rotating her hands carefully to keep the picture steady in her mind. She brings her thumbs up to find the wells of Ol’s eyes, and finds them a little sunken from poor sleep and missed meals. Oleander’s hair is as thick and curly as she described, and although a little greasy, it’s not unpleasant, at least not to Nue.

Turning her hands back, Nue slips her thumbs up and traces the bridge of Ol’s strong, straight, duchess nose, down to soft lips where she lingers. Ol’s mouth is small and her lips are chapped and, against her own better judgment, Nue can’t help but trace her bare thumb back and forth. It’s like a compulsion, and one that Nue knows she should resist. This isn’t what Oleander agreed to and now…

To Nue’s surprise, Ol’s lips part just slightly… just enough to catch Nue’s thumb in the ghost of a kiss.

“You’re…” Nue starts, raw-voiced, before clearing her throat and trying again. “You’re very beautiful.”

A tiny, odd kind of hiccup comes from Oleander at Nue’s words, and after a moment, Nue feels Ol’s hands come to rest over Nue’s and Nue feels her partner’s mouth curve into a smile and, more surprisingly, feels the faint wet warmth of tears trickle down from Oleander’s cheek and onto her hand.

“I am?”

Those two words sound so achingly broken, that Nue’s heart cracks at the sounds. All of a sudden, her throat and chest are tight with deeper emotion than she could remember feeling in a very long time, and no matter the effort, Nue found her words simply wouldn’t come to her, so instead she simply nodded.

That is when Oleander truly began to cry.

Thought plays no part in Nue’s next action as she moves her hands. One goes around Oleander’s head to tangle into her lush, dark hair, and the other slips down to her narrow waist as Nue pulls the younger woman in a sudden kiss.

Panic grips Nue’s heart briefly as her instincts scream at her that this going too far, but are silenced mere seconds later when Oleander throws her arms around Nue and presses into the kiss with more than equal fervor, deepening the kiss and opening her mouth invitingly against Nue’s lips. 

It has been so long.

Nue replies with a gentle, probing of her tongue, and the soft moan from her new partner encourages her. Nue grips Ol’s waist tightly, slipping her hands around the young woman’s tunic and up along soft, dark skin that’s deliciously bare beneath Nue’s fingers. The small sounds Ol’ makes eggs the older woman on as she slowly lowers Oleander to the ground until she’s lying supine and trembling under Nue’s weight.

“For the love of the Light, save it for town.”

Myrna’s ragged voice cuts through the atmosphere like a blade, and Nue freezes. Oleander only barely manages to do the same, and draws back from Nue’s lips reluctantly.

The powerfully built Seraph, encased in her tomb-like suit of armour, is staring impassively down at them. Somehow, the unchanging expression of angelic stoicism captured in steel on the woman’s faceplate, conveys a sense of wry amusement.

“We have heretics to slay,” she says dryly.

“Oh have a heart, Myr,” Ahir grumbles, rolling over from where he’d been resting on his side on the far end of the campfire. “Those two have been dancing around one another for _weeks._ ”

Nue coughs into her hand as she sits up sheepishly and turns to regard Ahir.

“How long have you been awake?”

The swarthy old man just shrugs, and smiles.

“If they’re going to have their first time,” Myrna says as she turns to kick dirt over the fire, “then better it be in a proper bed than out here, you old blasphemer.”

“I suppose so,” Ahir admits, shrugging as he stands and dusts off his robes. “So… back to it then?”

Nue stands and holds out a hand, pulling Oleander to her feet. As she rises, Oleander lets Nue draw her closer to rest against the blind woman’s chest. Nue wraps her arms around Ol’, hugging her tightly and burying her face in the thick, dark locks of the younger woman’s crown.

“Once we’re back in town, then,” Nue whispers.

Oleander has no reply, but she doesn’t need to give one. 

Nue can hear how fast her heart is beating.

**Author's Note:**

> The classes featured in this are the Thorn and the Philomath, which are excellent class mods found in the Steam Workshop by Mhnlo and Rehtaelle, respectively. If you enjoy Darkest Dungeon, I encourage you to check out these mods!
> 
> * * *
> 
> If you enjoy my fan work and are interested in following my original work, I urge you to visit my Patreon and check it out. I can't link it directly, but I'll give you a shot to my blog [here](https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/924151/official-patreon-announcement-plus-dead-by-midnight). I would deeply appreciate any support you can give.


End file.
